Military starts exercises with 11 nations

Published: 12 May 2014 11:30 GMT+02:00

The skies over northern Germany will be full of military planes over the coming couple of weeks as a large international military exercise takes off, involving thousands of soldiers from Germany and 11 other countries.

But the exercise is nothing to do with increased tensions between Europe and Russia over the situation in Ukraine, the Luftwaffe told The Local.

"This has been in planning for two years," a Luftwaffe spokesman said. "For it to have anything to do with Ukraine would have required a great degree of clairvoyance."

The Joint Air Warfare Tactical Exercise - known as JAWTEX 2014 - aims to practice the tactical integration of all forces - airforce, army and marines from the 11 countries.

Nearly 4,200 soldiers are taking part in the exercise, with more than 800 from other countries, including Holland, Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary and the USA.

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